Refugees and immigrants bring their own cultures, their own assumptions, beliefs, values, fears and hopes from their homelands. One cannot just assume that they wish to integrate or assimilate into the Western culture. Willingness to assimilate might well vary from individual to individual, and from culture to culture.
A society can only function smoothly if there is a large degree of agreement and commonality regarding to what language people shall speak, what rules they should follow in dealing with one another, and how government is to be established. Where is it written that all cultures are necessarily compatible with one another?
The success of immigrants in North America is a result of immigrants assimilating to Western culture and society, not due to immigrants clinging to the laws and practices of the lands they have left behind. We welcome them to become Americans and Canadians; we welcome to them to the West.
In our desire to insure an inclusive, humane, and tolerant society, we seem to have constructed a simplistic and inadequate picture of refugees and illegal immigrants.
Perhaps the majority of Americans and Canadians do not approach the question of refugees and immigrants with an open mind, but with a set of “progressive” assumptions:
The idea that all cultures are equally good and equally valuable, sometimes known as “cultural relativism.” When faced with an uninvited influx of outsiders, we do not worry about what culture the incomers are bringing, because, whatever it is, it supposedly must be fine.
That multiculturalism, the coexistence of a variety of cultures, is desirable. The more cultures in a multicultural society, the more cultural diversity, the better.
That in our society, and in the world generally, each person falls into the category of either oppressor or oppressed. our simple classification of oppressor and oppressed can generally class refugee claimants and illegal migrants as oppressed, because they are leaving a place of conflict or poverty or despotism, are people of colour, are Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or from a smaller, non-Christian group, or are homosexual. We therefore define refugee claimants and illegal refugees as oppressed, as victims, desperate, and in need. We view them through a humanitarian lens, with generosity and sympathy.
If we open our hearts to the oppressed, we must view the oppressors with disdain. Who are the oppressors? We are quite certain that women are oppressed by men, that homosexuals are oppressed by heterosexuals, that people of colour are oppressed by whites, that the poor are oppressed by the well off, and that Muslims are oppressed by Christians and Jews.